Only Child(16)

Daddy left my room last night after I got done singing. He turned off the lights in the hallway, and Mommy always keeps the lights on because it can’t be too dark in my room. It got too dark in my room. I tried to squeeze my eyes shut tight, but then it was even more dark. Right away pictures of people with blood came in my head and my heart started beating at super speed and my breathing went in and out fast.

I heard a sound in my room somewhere or in the bathroom like somebody was coming, and I started screaming very loud. I screamed and I got up and ran in the hallway, but I couldn’t see anything and I didn’t know where Daddy was and I could feel a person coming closer behind me, he was going to get me, and I tripped and fell down. I couldn’t get up and I screamed and screamed.

Then the door to Mommy and Daddy’s room opened and Daddy came running out. He turned on the hallway lights, and it was too bright in my eyes.

“Zach, Zach, ZACH!” Daddy picked me up under my armpits and yelled my name in my face over and over again. He shook me and I stopped screaming and he stopped yelling. It got quiet except for a loud whoosh, whoosh sound in my head. I looked behind me, but no one was there. I looked in my room and it looked like a dark black cave and I wasn’t going to sleep in there ever again by myself, and so Daddy let me sleep with him in his bed for once.

Now Daddy wasn’t in the bed with me anymore, so I got up to look for him. I walked down the hallway and past Andy’s room, and my hands felt sweaty and my legs walked very slow. I pushed Andy’s door open and walked in his room with very small steps. I didn’t want to look up to his top bunk at first. I thought that maybe I had a bad dream and Andy would be there, in his bed. But if the top bunk was empty, then it really happened, that Andy died, because Andy never gets up first, never before me. It’s really hard for him to wake up in the mornings. Mommy says it’s because of the medicine he has to take for the bad temper.

Andy takes the temper medicine in the mornings so he behaves at school, but it only works for a little while, and then his bad temper comes back when he gets home from school. One time I heard Mommy and Daddy fighting about the temper medicine because Daddy said Andy should take some in the afternoons so he behaves better at home, too. But Mommy said no, she wasn’t going to give him more, it wasn’t good for him, only before parties or special occasions where he has to behave good.

After a while I looked up at the top bunk. No Andy.

I knew Andy wasn’t there, but I said his name into his empty room anyway: “Andy.” There was no one there to hear it. It was like Andy’s room swallowed up his name and then it was gone, like him.

I went out of his room fast and downstairs. I could hear voices and sounds coming from the kitchen. Maybe Mommy was back from the hospital. But when I walked in the kitchen, Daddy was there and Grandma and Aunt Mary, not Mommy.

Daddy was sitting on the same barstool where he ate his cereal last night and he was still wearing his work clothes from yesterday, except for the suit jacket. Everything looked all wrinkly, and his beard was starting to grow. Daddy’s beard grows really fast, so he has to shave every day or he starts to look like Uncle Chip when he was still alive. Uncle Chip always let his beard grow, and it tickled me when he gave me a hug and a kiss, and sometimes food got stuck in it, and that was gross, so I’m glad Daddy always shaves, just today he didn’t.

His face looked all whitish where the beard wasn’t growing, like Mommy’s face yesterday at the hospital, and his eyes were dark all around. Maybe he didn’t sleep last night, even though he said it would be the best thing for us. The clock on the microwave said 8:10, and that meant I missed the school bus because it comes at 7:55 every day. So Daddy was going to have to drive me to school then probably. When I thought about McKinley, I thought about the POP sounds again and the people lying in the hallway, and the big scared feeling from last night came right back. I didn’t want to go back there. What if Andy was still there? Then I was going to see him dead with blood on him.

Grandma was sitting next to Daddy on a barstool, talking on the phone. She sat with her back very straight. She always sits like that and sometimes she sticks her finger into mine and Andy’s backs so we will sit up more straight, too, and she even does it to Daddy sometimes. Grandma didn’t look like her normal self and it was because she didn’t have on her red lipstick. I don’t like her lipstick, because when she gives me kisses it leaves red lip stamps on my face. I never saw her without it on before, it made her look different—like, older. She looked a little bit more like Mimi now, who is really old, she has white hair, and Grandma’s hair is blond. Also Mimi never wears lipstick. When Mimi smiles or laughs, her whole face gets wrinkles on it, especially around her eyes and her mouth. Grandma doesn’t have those, her face stays the same when she smiles.

Grandma’s lips shivered in between saying words into the phone. Aunt Mary was standing next to her with her hand on top of Grandma’s hand on the counter, and a lot of tears were running down her face.

“Daddy?” I said, and all at the same time, Daddy, Grandma, and Aunt Mary lifted their heads up and looked at where I was standing by the door.

“Oh my goodness, let me call you back,” Grandma said into the phone, and she put it down on the counter. Then she walked over to me, and I could see her lips were shivering even more now. “Oh, Zach,” she said, and she leaned down to me and her breath smelled bad, like old. She gave me a hug, and it was a little too hard and too tight. I moved my head to the side so I didn’t have to smell her breath anymore.